Keir Starmer's Covid Failure

Some sensible remarks from Jonathan Ashworth. Masks should be mandated to reduce the spread of Covid, and sick pay uprated so the low paid can self-isolate if they come down with it. Who could disagree, apart from the Tories and the unhinged anti-mask brigade? Unfortunately for the shadow health secretary, Keir Starmer does. According to an unnamed spox (anonymity's always okay for some), Labour is "not in favour of moving to Plan B on Covid ... They are in favour of "making Plan A work". Very collegiate of dear Keir to leave a senior politician and the longest serving shadow minister with egg on his face.

What does this even mean? "Plan A" is what we have going on at the moment. I.e. next to no precautions, and a slow and steady slippage away from people taking the right measures to protect themselves. Just as Jonathan observes the decline in masking up in his train journeys from Leicester, I've seen the same thing on my commute. Those taking the necessary measures to protect others in enclosed spaces are getting fewer by the day as millions are lured into a false sense of security, despite the sky high infections. The question has to be begged, how can this "Plan A", which has the Tories putting a friendly arm around Covid's shoulders and encouraging it to go forth and multiply, "work"? Presumably Starmer doesn't want more illness and more deaths and would like to see rates of transmission come down, and with it hospitalisations and mortality, so how can a plan that requires the government to do nothing be corrected within its own terms? Does he want Boris Johnson to "get a grip" by recommending people wear masks, and ordering his MPs to make like the Labour benches in the Commons? We don't know, because Starmer elected to waste his Prime Minister's Questions by asking six questions about the Online Harms Bill. Just as Covid is raging.

Readers know I don't have time for Starmer. His mendacity and shocking depths of incompetence is serving up Labour's electoral chances on a platter. But politicians don't position themselves for no reason. Starmer's back-peddling on plan B has to have some thought behind it, so what is it? In the absence of anything but a terse line, we can surmise it's a reversion to the miserable line Starmer held on Covid from the moment he assumed office. Don't criticise the government, look constructive, appear supportive, refuse to offer an alternative. In other words, a strategy for political suicide. Johnson's dishonest criticisms of Starmer that say he's carping and playing games with the pandemic have left him off-balance, and instead of refuting them he panders to an imagined audience who believe the Prime Minister. Refusing to challenge has led to the situation we're in now: 140,000 dead by the government's own statistics, but the Tories running away with the politics.

Superficially, "making plan A work" is about buying permission for Labour to be heard, but by saying nothing what message are Tory wobblers and those contemplating not voting supposed to hear? All they see is an opposition not doing opposition, and at worst outright complicity between the two parties. And they're right to. Even before he became leader, Starmer gave a flavour of what his "scrutiny" of the Tories was going to look like. Compare this with the properly constructive opposition of his predecessor, who offered concrete proposals the government took up with alacrity - but naturally, without offering Jeremy Corbyn any credit. We're back at square one. The tentative criticisms are bundled up like a sack of spuds under the stairs, an Starmer refers to his pull-your-socks-up comfort zone. It would be comedic if the consequences weren't so horrifying.

Here, we often talk about how the Tories' coming problems with their voter coalition. Property owners - usually the natural Tory constituent - are not being created in the same numbers, and as the Tory core pass away they're not going to reproduce themselves like-for-like. What is building problems for the Tories is those of working age now, who already tend toward Labour, are getting hammered by cuts and, soon, tax rises. The Tories are doing their best to appear repulsive towards them. The problem is, as forecast here a long time ago, Starmer is doing the same job for his party. Without any pretence of sticking up for working people, the poor, those who need support, his pathetic failure to back our people as they put their health and their lives on the line is only going to put off those who might otherwise vote Labour. He's disassembling the party's own natural constituency with nothing to show for it. Not even Tory voters impressed by his desperate efforts to appear safe and Conservative-lite to them.

Boris Johnson has let the virus rip and condemned tens of thousands to a premature death. Starmer's crime is nowhere near as grave, but he's trying his damnedest to ensure Coronavirus kills the Labour Party.

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